Review of Public Administration and Management

Abstract

Assessing Leadership Characteristics and their Impact on Leadership Effectiveness: The Case of One Public Institute in of Ethiopia

Jaleta Shuka Gurmu* and Kebede Geneti Feyissa

The research was done with the objective of assessing leadership characteristics and its impact on leadership effectiveness in the study organization of Ethiopia. Intended for this purpose, in this research both descriptive research and hypothesis testing research methods were implemented and only quantitative study approach was used, and 50 questionnaires were prepared from Essential Behavioral Leadership Qualities (EBLQ) method. Probability sampling technique was implemented for collecting data from 100 respondents from the study organization, and the relevant data was analyzed using a descriptive and inferential statistics. Accordingly, the result of the study revealed that from the total 50 leadership characteristics only 5 of them were with the highest mean value of 5 and found to be the dominant characteristics exhibited by the leaders at the study organization, 6 of them were with the high mean value with perceived strength and 13 of them were with the lowest mean value of 2 and with perceived limitation. The remaining 26 of them have 3 mean values which are considered as either with perceived strength or limitation. Moreover, regarding the association among leadership characteristics and the leadership effectiveness, this study revealed that leadership characteristics induce positive association with the leadership effectiveness with (r=0.156, 0.265, 0.064, 0.174, 0.432, 0.292; P<0.001) which implies that leadership characteristics has direct positive impact on leadership effectiveness. In conclusion, this assessment help leaders to determine what skills and abilities they can continue improve and what they need as a leader to develop. It, however, has some limitations such as that only quantitative data has been used. Based on the above finding the study recommends that the management of the study organization should introduce courses that can enable leaders know the type of leadership characteristics that would improve employees’ performance. The future researches should focus on using applicable research methods, beside with qualitative approaches.

Published Date: 2023-02-03; Received Date: 2022-10-18